Sunday, June 1, 2008

It's been a long time since I saw a good "new" horror movie. With crap like One Missed Call in the theaters, it's a pretty crappy time for the horror genre.

Wellll, that's until The Strangers came along. This movie was seriously freaky. It follows a young couple, James and Kristen (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) as they leave a wedding reception, and return to an isolated summer home. Sadly, they're not getting along and are making arrangements to sleep in separate rooms.

Even though it's four in the morning, a knock comes at the door. It's a young woman looking for someone that obviously doesn't live there. James and Kristen tell her that she's got the wrong house and presumably send her on her way. Unfortunately that's just the beginning.

The next hour-plus takes you on a psychological torture roller coaster. These whackjobs, sort of reminiscent of the Mansons, do all kinds of crazy shit to freak these people out way before even attempting to kill them. They move things around in the house, knock repeatedly at the door, and hang out by the windows to scare the crap out of them (and me) when they check what's going on outside.

This film is fast moving, realistic, and seriously scary. Liv Tyler is great in her first horror role, and I wonder why she hasn't thought about being a scream queen earlier in her career :o) Scott Speedman's hot but pretty forgettable, but it doesn't matter because this movie ROCKS. My fiancee's arm is still sore from me latching onto him every 30 seconds or so.

Grade: A (When A Stranger Calls -- scary as hell because this shit could actually happen)